Flamboyant oil-and-gas heir Stanley Marsh 3, who was celebrated for commissioning the famed Cadillac Ranch art installation in Amarillo, Texas, but whose life story turned dark when he was charged with sexually molesting teenage boys, died Tuesday. He was 76.
Marsh had been hospitalized for weeks with “various health issues,” said his longtime attorney, Kelly Utsinger. The lawyer declined to give a cause of death but said it was “natural.”
Although Marsh, sometimes dressed in colorful outfits, was himself an attraction in the Amarillo area where he owned several businesses, he mostly stayed out of the public eye in recent years. In 2012, after being sued for allegedly having sexual encounters with underage boys, Marsh was determined by a court to be incapacitated because of a series of strokes and other health problems.
Those civil suits were eventually settled in a confidential agreement. But also in 2012, a special prosecutor filed criminal charges against Marsh, alleging sex acts with teenagers. Marsh denied the allegations, and no trial date had been set, according to the Associated Press.
Utsinger said Cadillac Ranch, which is one of the best-known public art works in the country and was immortalized in a Bruce Springsteen song, is on land owned by a trust. “It will continue; nothing will be done to it at all,” he said.